Linger

I was in State College for the summer of '94, living in South Halls. It turned out to be uneventful. My first real semester was the Fall 1994 semester. I found myself living in North Halls, which, as a dormitory set, in the Nineties, was about artists and misfits. What is detailed about Kelly McCabe in Elegy's Ends is detailed with a great deal of affection. Mary and Abby were creative girls who could also come across as standoffish and pompous at any minute; Jen was amiable, usually, but displayed the hauteur of the beauty queen much of the time, too. Lo and behold: Kelly McCabe was not only genuine, she was what they call a nice person. She was good-natured, in a way that Mary, Abby, and Jen were not, exactly, or always. Kelly was also a gifted photographer, which would've received scoffs from Mary and Abby, but there it is. It remains strange that Linger, here, is such a plaintive song, because my memories of it, and of the fall of 1994, are so sanguine. Kelly was a Cranberries-head; not in least because Dolores O. seems to have lived for a while on her block in Lansdale. That feeling always happens when I hear The Cranberries: of the world opening up, of a bright new horizon set out before me, or a new expansive vista making itself known. Why I didn't stay with Kelly is that she only did one full semester at PSU, before disappearing into the mist. Her impact was, proved to be, indelible, as someone who, for me, was mostly about joy.